"To the devil with your protests," I cried angrily. "It is your action which matters. That’s all. We’ll go straight to him together."
All his doggedness had vanished now, and he was as limp as a chewed cigar end.
"I beg you will not do anything of the kind. If you like to make this a personal matter between us two----"
"Not I," I broke in with a short angry laugh. "I’ll have no duel as a way out for you. You can convince your Colonel that you did not mean what your acts suggest. Come to him with me now--if you dare."
But he dared not. I knew that; for I knew what the result would be, and so did he. "I am very sorry," he stammered. "I apologize. I---- What more can I do?"
"You can get out of the house," and I threw open the door. "As for your suspicions, tell them to whom you please--but don’t let me hear of it."
Without another word, without a glance even, he slunk out with his tail well between his legs, like the beaten cur he was.
I could afford to laugh at his threats, after my interview with Borsen and my recognition as a sort of unofficial "delegate" in Althea’s affairs. There was a tacit agreement that I was to have some little time in which to arrange things, and any chatter from von Bernhoff was not likely to do any harm.
I told Bessie the result of my talk to von Bernhoff, and then went out to lunch at my club and make some inquiries about the inner working of this Polish Irreconcilable movement. As I was to be one of them, I had better know all I could.
I got plenty of rumours and reports and gossip and a few facts. As England always has her Irish question with its disaffected Nationalists subject to occasional spurts of violence, so Germany will always have a Polish question. But her policy of drastic measures and sharp repression drives the trouble beneath the surface, where it festers like a national canker.
Openly the Irreconcilables were keeping within the law, and seeking an alliance with the powerful Socialist party and other sections, in the hope that eventually the combination would become strong enough to dictate the policy of the Empire, when it was hoped they would use their power to aid the renationalization of Poland.
At the same time, however, they were intriguing incessantly to throw discredit on the Government by worming out all sorts of official secrets the disclosure of which would tell to the disadvantage of the Kaiser. Mole work which was hateful to those in power.